Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has publicly urged Elon Musk to stop mocking the exchange after its reported $6.3 billion security breach, turning a series of jokes on X into a dispute over Binance’s financial resources and Musk’s relationship with the exchange.
The dispute began after Musk responded to a cybersecurity warning Zhao posted on October 28 — one day before Binance disclosed the breach — with laughing and fire emojis. After reports of the attack emerged, Musk commented “Everyday is Zeroday,” referring to zero-day vulnerabilities. Zhao replied that he wished more people had followed his warning, and later told Musk: “Elon, have a lot of respect for you, but bad time to troll. Please stop.”
Zhao then cited Binance’s $500 million contribution to Musk’s Twitter takeover, saying the resulting SpaceX shares were now worth more than $1 billion. “Our SPCX shares (from our $500m investment in your Twitter takeover) are worth more than a billion,” Zhao wrote. He added that he would appreciate support.
Binance co-CEO Yi He said the exchange’s annual revenue was sufficient to absorb the losses without selling the SpaceX shares. Zhao estimated the hack at more than $6 billion, with about $3 billion frozen and more than $1 billion available through Binance’s Secure Asset Fund for Users, leaving a rough gap of around $2 billion. He described that amount as manageable, although painful.
Binance said its initial investigation pointed to a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, with investigators also examining additional entry points. The exchange reported no evidence that wallet private keys had leaked, but blockchain investigators have attributed the breach to North Korea-linked Lazarus Group; Binance has not publicly confirmed those responsible. The incident involved an Ethereum wallet authorization that allowed the attacker to redirect funds from a major Binance hot wallet.
Binance expects withdrawals to resume within 48 hours of its October 30 service update, while deposits remain operational, and said a full technical report would follow its investigation. The episode has drawn mixed reactions across the crypto community, including from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who offered assistance and said the industry needed to cooperate during the security incident.
